Here's a submission I sent a few days ago about humanoid television-robots making the first handshake in space (on the ISS).
wisebabo writes
"As long as we are still in debt to the Chinese and can't afford an ambitious space program, we should be developing THESE (humanoid telerobots). Just get the astronaut NEAR the Moon or Mars (or someday Titan!) and operate these without that stupid speed-of-light time delay. A huge proportion of the weight and complexity of going to these places is that last 100 miles so while times are lean this is the way to go.
Maybe James Cameron can be persuaded to do a pre-quel of Avatar, unfortunately I don't think he'll find a planet full of sexy tele-robots!"
I guess the editors didn't like my flights of fancy.
wisebabo writes "The Singularity I've thought will be achieved when we get two things 1) true atomic level control over matter as demonstrated by human designed robots that can replicate themselves from the lego blocks of nature, atoms, and 2) when we have supra-human intelligence that can take over the difficult process of thinking. (Of course having #2 will make it a lot easier to achieve #1 but that's another topic).
Well it looks like we're getting closer to the first goal. Harvard researchers have built robots made from DNA. While I'm not sure the robots themselves can self-replicate, it seems probable that using PCR it would be easy to make trillions of these things at a time.
I know robots made from DNA may not be as flexible or robust as ones made from a completely "bottom up" approach (by Eric Drexler's assemblers) but it's a (good) start.. By using these self-assembling systems as a base, we can hopefully use them to make more general purpose machines. And as long as they're made from fragile DNA (carbon links) there's less chance of them becoming an unstoppable Grey Goo!
Now if only we could solve that pesky A.I. problem. If Siri and Watson had a baby, would it be HAL?;)
It was downmodded to oblivion in the "recent" section and the editors didn't post it! I guess people didn't like my nose joke, they're so picky!
wisebabo writes "Until we have nano bot self replicators* this is a good way to make LOTS of tiny robots cheaply. It leverages our huge technological infrastructure in making 2D chips into 3D bots!
*I guess if you think viruses are nano bots then I guess we already know how to make them already. I was cooking up a batch in my nose just last week!"
According to App store reviews the current version is buggy (it crashes a lot).
Still I got it because it's FREE (well the lite version is) and it will hopefully be upgraded to fix its bugs. Since I drink coffee for my health (many studies have shown it to help prevent colon, liver and prostate cancers and other diseases as well as enhance athletic performance) I'd really like to keep track of consumption.
Another add-on (sorry, the coffee must be really affecting me!).
Anyway, this would be good for Apple because they Google wouldn't easily be able to replicate this. (What are they going to do, ask Microsoft for help in optimizing Android to run under windows?).
I guess they could have Android run under Linux. I will not make any disparaging comments about the size of the user base.
Sorry to add to my previous post even before it was modded up (or down!) but it would even be better if Apple released a iMac/workstation like the one HP just did.
Am I crazy? Apple GETTING IDEAS FROM ITS COMPETITORS?!!
Well, HPs new machines have a great new feature. They allow the the display to be folded down FLAT. This allows them, in certain models, to be comfortably used with a TOUCH INTERFACE! Now I would love to use a multi-touch interface on a large surface without having to hold my arm upright ("gorilla arm" syndrome is what it's called).
You can do this if you allowed iOS Apps to run in Mountain Luon!
I would think that, at least at one level, this would be easy to do. I mean the developer environment already runs iOS on intel (in emulation mode). They even have a way of emulating the touch interface (but I'm not sure how good multitouch works).
While a lot of Apps wouldn't really find a market or niche (who needs a basic sketch App when you've got Photoshop) there are hundreds, no thousands (tens of thousands?) of others that would be useful or interesting. Like all the media Apps or perhaps music Apps.
Anyway, I think it would help both Apple and the developers (who could opt out if they wanted to). So why not?
Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Katamari that weird video game where you roll up a bigger and bigger ball of stuff until you end up absorbing everything?
Well, I've proposed in the past of using aerogels as a giant, low mass "sponge" to mop up orbital debris. The big problem is that nobody has demonstrated a way of manufacturing the stuff, in space, and certainly not without using a lot of the (heavy) supercritical fluid it takes to do it on earth. Since it is too bulky to launch from earth already made, this idea remains in the realm of science fiction.
Anyway, here's a different take on this idea. Perhaps, this Swiss (and other) probes could be launched with the following program in mind. First, they should go after the biggest piece of debris they can find, a spent upper stage would be just fine. Then, using a highly efficient ion engine, they should (slowly) change the orbit of the upper stage so that it will hit other pieces of space debris in as close to head-on collisions as possible. Wham!
While I hardly expect the pieces to stick together like in the video game, the resultant collision should slow down any resulting fragments from the space debris (and the upper stage battering ram) so they will de-orbit quickly. When, after many collisions, the battering ram has been whittled down to no longer be effective, the probe should push it so it de-orbits quickly and goes off to find another. In this way, over a ((very) long) period of time this one probe can clean up a lot of space debris! Think Wall-E in space.
Of course the probe will have to be specially designed to do this task. It'll need a LOT of propellent, even with an ultra-efficient ion engine you're talking about significant delta-vee of large masses. Big engines would help too because otherwise it'll take a LONG time to change these orbits. A good grappling mechanism and thrusters (ion again?) will be required to stop the upper stage from spinning. Also, even though it'll use the upper stage as a battering ram, it might need to have its own armoring; there will doubtless be scattered hypervelocity fragments. (Big solar panels for the probe are pretty vulnerable, a small reactor or even laser power from the ground might be needed for the power hungry ion drives). Finally, some of the most advanced anti-sat/anti-ballistic targeting technology will be needed to hit the debris; you're still hitting a bullet with a (big) bullet. At least the space debris is unlikely to be taking any evasive maneuvers!
What's critical of course is that the probe/battering ram hits the space debris as HEAD-ON as possible, this is to rob the debris (and its fragments) of as much orbital momentum as possible so that they almost literally "fall out of the sky". Otherwise you'll potentially end up with a situation like when the defunct Rusian sat hit the Iridium satellite; much MORE debris was created. As for the probe/battering ram, of course it will lose orbital momentum during each collision, the difference is that it can regain it with its ion-drive (better not hit something too big!).
Even a few minutes (seconds?!) would be invaluable in a first strike. Rather than the (roughly) 30 minutes a warhead would take from launch plume to impact or even the 10(?) minutes a submarine launched warhead takes on a depressed trajectory, an orbital nuke could be de-orbited even quicker. Or, if you want an EMP, instantaneously (see "Goldeneye").
These minutes could be used to catch missiles in their silos and bombers on their airfields. All that would be left would be the subs which might not be enough to be a credible deterrent.
A long time ago, during a more optimistic time when we dreamt of jet packs and lunar colonies (no,not by sacrifing the rest of the economy Newt Gingrich style) recycling wasn't going to be a problem.
Just drop waste into a plasma torch; everything would be reduced to "indivisible" atoms (yes I know that's what the word atom means).
I guess that particular dream vanished with the electric power from nuclear reactors that would be "too cheap to meter".
Anyway, not complaining too much. The past didn't see our future filled with fun handheld gadgets and the Internet. And who knows, maybe Siri will have a baby with Watson. (We should name him HAL). We also don't have nukes in low earth orbit ready to finish off the human race in a few minutes. Still, even though renewables will probably keep us warm in the winter and cool in the hotter summers, it's not clear that we'll have really high intensity power sources to squander, I mean use, anytime soon. I mean nuclear fusion is 20 years away and power from satellites even further.
Let's just hope it doesn't get as bad as in "The Windup Girl".
I read somewhere (on the net of a million lies) that Bees (and other insects) can see polarized light. Then you can see flowers in a whole way (and maybe better find your way home).
Or get circularly polarized contact lenses and see like a mantis shrimp!
You're right of course. And, please GOD (and I'm an atheist!) don't let anything go wrong with those two missions! The loss of the (now) $8 Billion Webb Space Telescope and/or $2.5 Billion Curiosity rover would be almost a national catastrophe! Maybe more but cheaper probes would be better (although going back to the "faster, better, cheaper" paradigm might not be a good idea based on what happened).
I'll certainly be gritting my teeth during the launch/deployment of the JWST and "sky crane" landing of the rover!
Has there been any indication of the slight change in velocity experienced by (one of?) the Pioneer probes? (I don't know if it was claimed to affect the Voyager probes).
I realize that they think it was due to heating causing a tiny radiation pressure but just wondering.
Also, have they decided if there is a ring system at Pluto to avoid? Any follow on plans to image any specific Kuiper objects?
You know, if they could figure out how to use the main dish for radio-astronometric purposes, it would be fantastic! Although the dish size is very small compared to the ones on the ground, if they could make this work what a fantastic baseline! 100AU! I think they've got enough power to do this (the half life of the plutoniium is 88 years). But maybe they'd need to have an atomic clock on board to pull it off, I doubt they thought of that:(
Ok, I know this is about what the iPad 3 LOOKS like but has anyone heard any news about a (hopeful) storage upgrade?
My iPad has 64GB and I long, long ago ran out of room! I use the Seagate Satellite to provide 500GB of wireless storage for my media but it does not help for my Apps (1,000+).
Yes, I realize that Android tablets have removable storage but they don't have the worthwhile media centric Apps that I want.:(
I mean it's possible to run your old Commodore 64 or TRS-80 (or even Apple II?) software in a software emulator of these machines. And it's (mostly?) legal to do so? (BTW, anyone know of an Apple II emulator which will run the game "Epoch"?)
So are there software emulators for an IBM 360 or VAX out there? Can I run them on my iPad? There might be some interesting software that you could play with, despite the primitive hardware they did send Man to the moon using these systems as well as defend the U.S. against nuclear attack and run the IRS. (Getting this code might be a bit of a problem!)
Even if there isn't a software emulator DIRECTLY for a mainframe to run on my iPad, what about one that'll run on a pentium class PC. Then is it practical to run THAT in emulation mode on my iPad?
Many people will be using their mobile devices (I'm assuming these vulnerabilites aren't secific to iOS) on 3G even if there is a wifi network because it's cheaper, more reliable, just plain lazy or don't know there is wifi present.
So is 3G well encrypted? Or are there a lack of 3G scanning tools?
Really? This IP based voice traffic remains separate from "regular" Internet traffic all the way from the originating phone to the end phone?
If true, I'm surprised but I guess that's ok. I can see how converting to packet based technologies WITHOUT sharing the "Real" Internet's infrastructure could still make it worthwhile to do so. I'm a little afraid that there's too much temptation to mix it in with normal traffic (or share other pieces of hardware like routers or even power supplies) to save even more money but maybe there are strict rules against doing so.
Sorry if I've been living in a cave for the last few years (decades?) but is putting our voice communications over the same technological infrastructure as supports the Internet such a good idea?
I mean isn't having completely separate systems for certain things good? When we have a power outage, the toilets still flush and the (simple) telephones still work. When a water main breaks the elevators still run and... you get the point.
So what happens when a hacker brings down the critical routers supporting a major metropolitan area? Or everyone tries to simultaneously download a video the latest sex tape of Hillary Clinton with Newt Gingrich? Having regular phone services cut off (as well as emergency 911 services) would not be good.
I am glad that seemingly hard facts are being presented.
While I still think the overwhelming evidence supports the hypothesis that 1) GW is occurring and 2) man is responsible, at least this is better than the ranting and raving that I've come to expect from skeptics.
Of course my thinking is sustained by much more complete data sets of a GLOBAL perspective provided by climatologists. There was a recent animation produced by NASA recently that showed a map of worldwide temperature readings for the past 150 years. (I submitted it to slashdot, for some reason it was rejected). If the skeptics can continue to produce data that shows the GW is not happening I'm open to changing my thinking. But again, from what I've been following in the literature, there hasn't been much supporting their point of view.
Look, I'm not ideologically opposed to fossil fuels per say; with the vastly increased amounts of natural gas in the U.S. I'm happy to use a fuel that doesn't directly fund people who hate us. However I'm also not one to overlook an inconvenient truth.
(IP: Intellectual Property not Internet Protocol).
I don't know the particulars of this case but, assuming Apple IS violating their trademark, what are the chances that this will cause other Chinese companies to stop infringing on foreign trademarks, copyrights and patents?
If this really changed the way Chinese companies legally did business (and stopped their alleged illegal theft of IP through industrial espionage) then 1.6 Billion would be a small price to pay. Way to take it on the chin for America, Apple!
Is this audio cleanup technology on for "normal" use I.e. making phone calls? Can it be switched on or off in Apps so that, for example, a program like Skype could use it? Maybe Apple should provide an API for it (I assume they haven't already).
Is it (the algorithms) very processor intensive? Would that preclude a software only version of it running as a background process on a jail broken phone? Will the (rumored) upcoming quad core chips be able to run it without dedicated silicon?
By the way, I recently had the pleasure of going up in a small private plane and, in the cockpit, wore some headsets which remarkably cut out the background noise but recognized whenever we spoke. Is that what this technology does?
So, for a dystopian novel (and if you read it closely it is VERY dystopian with what's left of mankind scavenging for what few "calories" they can) I thought is was a "fun" read. Maybe that's because I've been to BKK many many times (I live in Vietnam) and it is the preferred destination for most expats R&R. (In addition to being a "Disneyland for adults", Bangkok consistently is rated the world's top tourist destination for being cheap AND fun!;). The author gets many details about Bangkok right while projecting it into the despairing future; I especially like the abandoned skyscrapers that are today the icons of the city.
Unfortunately for the novel (but very fortunately for us!) there is no way the world will turn out that bad at least not due to the overwhelming shortage of energy he predicts. Even if we completely run out of fossil fuels (unlikely) or have their use almost completely prohibited worldwide to stop climate change (a bit less unlikely), it looks like renewables will save our energy butts. Even now solar and wind are *only* a factor of two or three times more expensive than fossil fuels; we may be headed for a poorer world (and one in which air travel will again be a luxury only for the rich) but we won't be so desperately scavenging for energy as to make genetically engineered animals (and people!) a necessary substitute. Of course he did this partly to play up the "wind up" aspects of a society which requires this animal energy to be stored up somehow but I'm very glad it won't come to pass.
His climate change predictions, on the other hand, are much more spot on and do foretell a world where the major coastal cities of the world are under constant threat of inundation.:(. As well as it being very hot and humid.:(:(
Actually, I think(?) that a giant scope like these could never look at the Moon (and maybe Venus, the next brightest object in the night sky) is because the light gathering capability would burn the sensors.
I mean the light amplification from something 8m across down to about a centimeter(?) must be close to a million fold. So imagine moonlight a million times brighter. Gives new meaning to the expression "blinded me with science".
But maybe they put a piece of cardboard in front of the mirror and punch a little hole in it.
I understand that (one of) the designs for the TPF was for four optically linked telescopes spanning about(?) 100m that using interferometry/optical nulling/coronagraphs could isolate enough light from a planet to get its spectrograph and thus determine if it (might) have life.
Of course the TPF was not only supposed to be in space but in DEEP space (in Jupiter orbit, at the trojan point?) so as to avoid the zodiacal light but is this overcome by the MUCH greater light capturing ability of these giant 'scopes? Or are they too deep in our own atmosphere to be able to get any sort of spectrographic reading of another planet's atmosphere at any wavelength? (Is there any mountain on earth tall enough?)
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a submission I sent a few days ago about humanoid television-robots making the first handshake in space (on the ISS).
wisebabo writes
"As long as we are still in debt to the Chinese and can't afford an ambitious space program, we should be developing THESE (humanoid telerobots). Just get the astronaut NEAR the Moon or Mars (or someday Titan!) and operate these without that stupid speed-of-light time delay. A huge proportion of the weight and complexity of going to these places is that last 100 miles so while times are lean this is the way to go.
Maybe James Cameron can be persuaded to do a pre-quel of Avatar, unfortunately I don't think he'll find a planet full of sexy tele-robots!"
Link to Original Source
I guess the editors didn't like my flights of fancy.
wisebabo writes
"The Singularity I've thought will be achieved when we get two things 1) true atomic level control over matter as demonstrated by human designed robots that can replicate themselves from the lego blocks of nature, atoms, and 2) when we have supra-human intelligence that can take over the difficult process of thinking. (Of course having #2 will make it a lot easier to achieve #1 but that's another topic).
Well it looks like we're getting closer to the first goal. Harvard researchers have built robots made from DNA. While I'm not sure the robots themselves can self-replicate, it seems probable that using PCR it would be easy to make trillions of these things at a time.
I know robots made from DNA may not be as flexible or robust as ones made from a completely "bottom up" approach (by Eric Drexler's assemblers) but it's a (good) start.. By using these self-assembling systems as a base, we can hopefully use them to make more general purpose machines. And as long as they're made from fragile DNA (carbon links) there's less chance of them becoming an unstoppable Grey Goo!
Now if only we could solve that pesky A.I. problem. If Siri and Watson had a baby, would it be HAL? ;)
Link to Original Source
It was downmodded to oblivion in the "recent" section and the editors didn't post it! I guess people didn't like my nose joke, they're so picky!
wisebabo writes
"Until we have nano bot self replicators* this is a good way to make LOTS of tiny robots cheaply. It leverages our huge technological infrastructure in making 2D chips into 3D bots!
*I guess if you think viruses are nano bots then I guess we already know how to make them already. I was cooking up a batch in my nose just last week!"
Link to Original Source
According to App store reviews the current version is buggy (it crashes a lot).
Still I got it because it's FREE (well the lite version is) and it will hopefully be upgraded to fix its bugs. Since I drink coffee for my health (many studies have shown it to help prevent colon, liver and prostate cancers and other diseases as well as enhance athletic performance) I'd really like to keep track of consumption.
Another add-on (sorry, the coffee must be really affecting me!).
Anyway, this would be good for Apple because they Google wouldn't easily be able to replicate this. (What are they going to do, ask Microsoft for help in optimizing Android to run under windows?).
I guess they could have Android run under Linux. I will not make any disparaging comments about the size of the user base.
Sorry to add to my previous post even before it was modded up (or down!) but it would even be better if Apple released a iMac/workstation like the one HP just did.
Am I crazy? Apple GETTING IDEAS FROM ITS COMPETITORS?!!
Well, HPs new machines have a great new feature. They allow the the display to be folded down FLAT. This allows them, in certain models, to be comfortably used with a TOUCH INTERFACE! Now I would love to use a multi-touch interface on a large surface without having to hold my arm upright ("gorilla arm" syndrome is what it's called).
What do you think?
You can do this if you allowed iOS Apps to run in Mountain Luon!
I would think that, at least at one level, this would be easy to do. I mean the developer environment already runs iOS on intel (in emulation mode). They even have a way of emulating the touch interface (but I'm not sure how good multitouch works).
While a lot of Apps wouldn't really find a market or niche (who needs a basic sketch App when you've got Photoshop) there are hundreds, no thousands (tens of thousands?) of others that would be useful or interesting. Like all the media Apps or perhaps music Apps.
Anyway, I think it would help both Apple and the developers (who could opt out if they wanted to). So why not?
Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Katamari that weird video game where you roll up a bigger and bigger ball of stuff until you end up absorbing everything?
Well, I've proposed in the past of using aerogels as a giant, low mass "sponge" to mop up orbital debris. The big problem is that nobody has demonstrated a way of manufacturing the stuff, in space, and certainly not without using a lot of the (heavy) supercritical fluid it takes to do it on earth. Since it is too bulky to launch from earth already made, this idea remains in the realm of science fiction.
Anyway, here's a different take on this idea. Perhaps, this Swiss (and other) probes could be launched with the following program in mind. First, they should go after the biggest piece of debris they can find, a spent upper stage would be just fine. Then, using a highly efficient ion engine, they should (slowly) change the orbit of the upper stage so that it will hit other pieces of space debris in as close to head-on collisions as possible. Wham!
While I hardly expect the pieces to stick together like in the video game, the resultant collision should slow down any resulting fragments from the space debris (and the upper stage battering ram) so they will de-orbit quickly. When, after many collisions, the battering ram has been whittled down to no longer be effective, the probe should push it so it de-orbits quickly and goes off to find another. In this way, over a ((very) long) period of time this one probe can clean up a lot of space debris! Think Wall-E in space.
Of course the probe will have to be specially designed to do this task. It'll need a LOT of propellent, even with an ultra-efficient ion engine you're talking about significant delta-vee of large masses. Big engines would help too because otherwise it'll take a LONG time to change these orbits. A good grappling mechanism and thrusters (ion again?) will be required to stop the upper stage from spinning. Also, even though it'll use the upper stage as a battering ram, it might need to have its own armoring; there will doubtless be scattered hypervelocity fragments. (Big solar panels for the probe are pretty vulnerable, a small reactor or even laser power from the ground might be needed for the power hungry ion drives). Finally, some of the most advanced anti-sat/anti-ballistic targeting technology will be needed to hit the debris; you're still hitting a bullet with a (big) bullet. At least the space debris is unlikely to be taking any evasive maneuvers!
What's critical of course is that the probe/battering ram hits the space debris as HEAD-ON as possible, this is to rob the debris (and its fragments) of as much orbital momentum as possible so that they almost literally "fall out of the sky". Otherwise you'll potentially end up with a situation like when the defunct Rusian sat hit the Iridium satellite; much MORE debris was created. As for the probe/battering ram, of course it will lose orbital momentum during each collision, the difference is that it can regain it with its ion-drive (better not hit something too big!).
Even a few minutes (seconds?!) would be invaluable in a first strike. Rather than the (roughly) 30 minutes a warhead would take from launch plume to impact or even the 10(?) minutes a submarine launched warhead takes on a depressed trajectory, an orbital nuke could be de-orbited even quicker. Or, if you want an EMP, instantaneously (see "Goldeneye").
These minutes could be used to catch missiles in their silos and bombers on their airfields. All that would be left would be the subs which might not be enough to be a credible deterrent.
A long time ago, during a more optimistic time when we dreamt of jet packs and lunar colonies (no,not by sacrifing the rest of the economy Newt Gingrich style) recycling wasn't going to be a problem.
Just drop waste into a plasma torch; everything would be reduced to "indivisible" atoms (yes I know that's what the word atom means).
I guess that particular dream vanished with the electric power from nuclear reactors that would be "too cheap to meter".
Anyway, not complaining too much. The past didn't see our future filled with fun handheld gadgets and the Internet. And who knows, maybe Siri will have a baby with Watson. (We should name him HAL). We also don't have nukes in low earth orbit ready to finish off the human race in a few minutes. Still, even though renewables will probably keep us warm in the winter and cool in the hotter summers, it's not clear that we'll have really high intensity power sources to squander, I mean use, anytime soon. I mean nuclear fusion is 20 years away and power from satellites even further.
Let's just hope it doesn't get as bad as in "The Windup Girl".
I read somewhere (on the net of a million lies) that Bees (and other insects) can see polarized light. Then you can see flowers in a whole way (and maybe better find your way home).
Or get circularly polarized contact lenses and see like a mantis shrimp!
You're right of course. And, please GOD (and I'm an atheist!) don't let anything go wrong with those two missions! The loss of the (now) $8 Billion Webb Space Telescope and/or $2.5 Billion Curiosity rover would be almost a national catastrophe! Maybe more but cheaper probes would be better (although going back to the "faster, better, cheaper" paradigm might not be a good idea based on what happened).
I'll certainly be gritting my teeth during the launch/deployment of the JWST and "sky crane" landing of the rover!
Has there been any indication of the slight change in velocity experienced by (one of?) the Pioneer probes? (I don't know if it was claimed to affect the Voyager probes).
I realize that they think it was due to heating causing a tiny radiation pressure but just wondering.
Also, have they decided if there is a ring system at Pluto to avoid? Any follow on plans to image any specific Kuiper objects?
You know, if they could figure out how to use the main dish for radio-astronometric purposes, it would be fantastic! Although the dish size is very small compared to the ones on the ground, if they could make this work what a fantastic baseline! 100AU! I think they've got enough power to do this (the half life of the plutoniium is 88 years). But maybe they'd need to have an atomic clock on board to pull it off, I doubt they thought of that :(
Ok, I know this is about what the iPad 3 LOOKS like but has anyone heard any news about a (hopeful) storage upgrade?
My iPad has 64GB and I long, long ago ran out of room! I use the Seagate Satellite to provide 500GB of wireless storage for my media but it does not help for my Apps (1,000+).
Yes, I realize that Android tablets have removable storage but they don't have the worthwhile media centric Apps that I want. :(
I mean it's possible to run your old Commodore 64 or TRS-80 (or even Apple II?) software in a software emulator of these machines. And it's (mostly?) legal to do so? (BTW, anyone know of an Apple II emulator which will run the game "Epoch"?)
So are there software emulators for an IBM 360 or VAX out there? Can I run them on my iPad? There might be some interesting software that you could play with, despite the primitive hardware they did send Man to the moon using these systems as well as defend the U.S. against nuclear attack and run the IRS. (Getting this code might be a bit of a problem!)
Even if there isn't a software emulator DIRECTLY for a mainframe to run on my iPad, what about one that'll run on a pentium class PC. Then is it practical to run THAT in emulation mode on my iPad?
... of his citizenship send him to a country where apostasy isn't a crime?
Or would the number of tweets fom like minded citizens hoping to duplicate his fortune crash twitter's servers?
Many people will be using their mobile devices (I'm assuming these vulnerabilites aren't secific to iOS) on 3G even if there is a wifi network because it's cheaper, more reliable, just plain lazy or don't know there is wifi present.
So is 3G well encrypted? Or are there a lack of 3G scanning tools?
Really? This IP based voice traffic remains separate from "regular" Internet traffic all the way from the originating phone to the end phone?
If true, I'm surprised but I guess that's ok. I can see how converting to packet based technologies WITHOUT sharing the "Real" Internet's infrastructure could still make it worthwhile to do so. I'm a little afraid that there's too much temptation to mix it in with normal traffic (or share other pieces of hardware like routers or even power supplies) to save even more money but maybe there are strict rules against doing so.
Maybe.
Sorry if I've been living in a cave for the last few years (decades?) but is putting our voice communications over the same technological infrastructure as supports the Internet such a good idea?
I mean isn't having completely separate systems for certain things good? When we have a power outage, the toilets still flush and the (simple) telephones still work. When a water main breaks the elevators still run and... you get the point.
So what happens when a hacker brings down the critical routers supporting a major metropolitan area? Or everyone tries to simultaneously download a video the latest sex tape of Hillary Clinton with Newt Gingrich? Having regular phone services cut off (as well as emergency 911 services) would not be good.
I am glad that seemingly hard facts are being presented.
While I still think the overwhelming evidence supports the hypothesis that 1) GW is occurring and 2) man is responsible, at least this is better than the ranting and raving that I've come to expect from skeptics.
Of course my thinking is sustained by much more complete data sets of a GLOBAL perspective provided by climatologists. There was a recent animation produced by NASA recently that showed a map of worldwide temperature readings for the past 150 years. (I submitted it to slashdot, for some reason it was rejected). If the skeptics can continue to produce data that shows the GW is not happening I'm open to changing my thinking. But again, from what I've been following in the literature, there hasn't been much supporting their point of view.
Look, I'm not ideologically opposed to fossil fuels per say; with the vastly increased amounts of natural gas in the U.S. I'm happy to use a fuel that doesn't directly fund people who hate us. However I'm also not one to overlook an inconvenient truth.
(IP: Intellectual Property not Internet Protocol).
I don't know the particulars of this case but, assuming Apple IS violating their trademark, what are the chances that this will cause other Chinese companies to stop infringing on foreign trademarks, copyrights and patents?
If this really changed the way Chinese companies legally did business (and stopped their alleged illegal theft of IP through industrial espionage) then 1.6 Billion would be a small price to pay. Way to take it on the chin for America, Apple!
Is this audio cleanup technology on for "normal" use I.e. making phone calls? Can it be switched on or off in Apps so that, for example, a program like Skype could use it? Maybe Apple should provide an API for it (I assume they haven't already).
Is it (the algorithms) very processor intensive? Would that preclude a software only version of it running as a background process on a jail broken phone? Will the (rumored) upcoming quad core chips be able to run it without dedicated silicon?
By the way, I recently had the pleasure of going up in a small private plane and, in the cockpit, wore some headsets which remarkably cut out the background noise but recognized whenever we spoke. Is that what this technology does?
So, for a dystopian novel (and if you read it closely it is VERY dystopian with what's left of mankind scavenging for what few "calories" they can) I thought is was a "fun" read. Maybe that's because I've been to BKK many many times (I live in Vietnam) and it is the preferred destination for most expats R&R. (In addition to being a "Disneyland for adults", Bangkok consistently is rated the world's top tourist destination for being cheap AND fun! ;). The author gets many details about Bangkok right while projecting it into the despairing future; I especially like the abandoned skyscrapers that are today the icons of the city.
Unfortunately for the novel (but very fortunately for us!) there is no way the world will turn out that bad at least not due to the overwhelming shortage of energy he predicts. Even if we completely run out of fossil fuels (unlikely) or have their use almost completely prohibited worldwide to stop climate change (a bit less unlikely), it looks like renewables will save our energy butts. Even now solar and wind are *only* a factor of two or three times more expensive than fossil fuels; we may be headed for a poorer world (and one in which air travel will again be a luxury only for the rich) but we won't be so desperately scavenging for energy as to make genetically engineered animals (and people!) a necessary substitute. Of course he did this partly to play up the "wind up" aspects of a society which requires this animal energy to be stored up somehow but I'm very glad it won't come to pass.
His climate change predictions, on the other hand, are much more spot on and do foretell a world where the major coastal cities of the world are under constant threat of inundation. :(. As well as it being very hot and humid. :( :(
Actually, I think(?) that a giant scope like these could never look at the Moon (and maybe Venus, the next brightest object in the night sky) is because the light gathering capability would burn the sensors.
I mean the light amplification from something 8m across down to about a centimeter(?) must be close to a million fold. So imagine moonlight a million times brighter. Gives new meaning to the expression "blinded me with science".
But maybe they put a piece of cardboard in front of the mirror and punch a little hole in it.
(Terrestrial Planet Finder)
I understand that (one of) the designs for the TPF was for four optically linked telescopes spanning about(?) 100m that using interferometry/optical nulling/coronagraphs could isolate enough light from a planet to get its spectrograph and thus determine if it (might) have life.
Of course the TPF was not only supposed to be in space but in DEEP space (in Jupiter orbit, at the trojan point?) so as to avoid the zodiacal light but is this overcome by the MUCH greater light capturing ability of these giant 'scopes? Or are they too deep in our own atmosphere to be able to get any sort of spectrographic reading of another planet's atmosphere at any wavelength? (Is there any mountain on earth tall enough?)